


Don't Stop if I Fall (and Don't Look Back)

by DiscoCritic



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album), My Chemical Romance, The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic)
Genre: (those are the BL/ind pills), (until about halfway through and then it's mostly the same person), Aftermath of Torture, Based on a Music Video, Canon-Typical Violence, Electrocution, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Interrogation, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, Post-SING (Music Video), References to Drugs, Reincarnation, Temporary Character Death, Torture, dead bodies, gays in the desert, hand holding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2019-11-16 07:36:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18090131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscoCritic/pseuds/DiscoCritic
Summary: The Fabulous Four fought gallantly. They scrambled for food and shelter and protection but never ceased to provide the best life possible for the girl. They loved her like she was their own baby sister and gave up anything necessary. So when it came time to sacrifice their lives for her, they didn't bat an eye. They expected to die; from the first moment they formed the crew, it was set in stone that they would go out with a bang.But fate is a funny thing, and sometimes, people are given second chances.





	1. Chapter 1

They drive.

Past security cameras, right through the clearance gates. They don’t care.

They’re getting their girl back.

A polaroid of her is taped to the dashboard. To remind them what they’re fighting for.

They took it one day with an abandoned camera that they weren’t even expecting to work. They didn’t think it would be the only thing keeping them going.

They screech to a halt, park in front of SCARECROW headquarters, and get out. They fire without looking to see who’s in front of them. It doesn’t matter. They all have masks.

It takes seven minutes to get to the control room. They blow out the cameras, ghost the operators. The girl’s right there, sitting cross-legged on the floor, with an incredulous expression.

She runs into Party Poison’s open arms and he holds her against his chest.

“You came t’ get me,” she whispers.

She doesn’t want to let go, but they’ve got to get out. He takes her hand and they get up.

She walks in front of them as they storm the halls, alarms blaring. They’ve been seen. And they know it.

They’ve almost made it back to the front room, freedom awaiting, when an elevator door slides open. Then another one.

They’re surrounded, and it’s four against thirty. And the other side keeps on coming.

Party Poison and the Kobra Kid go back-to-back as they shoot, their lasers darting between heads and into chests. The girl is crouched down on the floor and she puts her hands over her ears. It’s too loud. Too much noise and too much fear. She wants to close her eyes but she can’t make herself do it.

Half of the enemy is dead. It’s looking up for them.

Until Party Poison gets too close.

He doesn’t shoot; he grabs the mask off the closest Drac instead. It falls, but a person’s under there.

A person he recognizes from old photos hanging in Dr. Death-Defying’s radio station.

He backs away, drops the mask. Picks it up. His hands don’t know what to do. He’s staring at it when Korse comes up.

The SCARECROW shoves him against the wall. Party Poison’s expression is scared, sad. Small.

He’s still holding the Drac mask and his gun is on the floor somewhere.

Korse puts his gun to Party Poison’s chin. The metal digs into his skin.

The Kobra Kid sees too late and charges.

Korse smiles.

And pulls the trigger.

The leader of the Fabulous Four slumps to the ground and doesn’t move.

The girl lets out a shriek and shuts her eyes.

The Kobra Kid screams and shoots down two Dracs and hits Korse in the leg as he runs to his brother.

He doesn’t make it. A laser to the side stops him short. He falls down and doesn’t get up.

Jet Star and Fun Ghoul look at each other. They’ve got to leave the other two behind.

They grab the girl and all three sprint for the door. Jet Star and the girl make it out. Fun Ghoul pulls the door shut behind them. He stays.

He and Jet Star make eye contact, and Fun Ghoul shakes his head. The girl reaches out for him but Jet Star grabs her hand.

“Go!” The one word is inaudible through the glass, but it’s clear as day. Tears stream down her eyes but she follows Jet Star to the trans-am.

Fun Ghoul turns back, looks at the brothers—half of their group—motionless on the tile floor and shoots. He shoots. He shoots. He shoots. Dracs go down, exterminators, everyone.

The glass behind him shatters where the enemy’s rays miss him.

Lasers go back and forth. He refuses to stop.

And then he’s on the receiving end, hit in the shoulder. But he stays on his feet, eyes watering and face scrunched up in pain. He’s barely staying focused but that won’t stop him.

Fun Ghoul fires over and over, finger pulling the trigger repeatedly until he’s hit once more. The shot punctures his left lung.

That takes him down for good. The breath leaves him and his eyes close for the last time.

Jet Star sees. But he keeps running. The girl’s right behind him, dodging the blasts meant for him. He backs up against the grille of the car and aims toward the building. They’re being followed.

A ray hits him in the chest and he falls backward onto the hood of the trans-am. There’s smoke sizzling from the burn. His gun slides out of his hand. He’s dead.

The girl has no one left. She stands on the curb, waiting, crying.

Dr. Death-Defying’s van pulls up a minute later, skids to a stop, and Show Pony jumps out. They’re not wearing their rollerskates. DJ Hot Chimp is in the front, driving.

The girl gets in and they pull away.

* * *

Eight hours later, in a small white room and handcuffed to the table, Party Poison wakes up.


	2. Chapter 2

He notices three things.

It’s very quiet.

It’s very white.

And his entire body aches like he’s just been ran over by a semi-truck twenty times.

His cheek is pressed into the table. He lifts his head.

There’s no color, no decoration. Just a table, the chair he’s in, and a television in the corner. It’s off.

This is like a jail cell.

He thinks of the girl, of Kobra and Ghoul and Jet, and then the real question comes to him.

Why is he not dead?

He remembers. Being shot.

It was indescribable. Like a blast of lightning to the head.  His brain was fried. It was hell.

Hell, that’s all Party Poison can remember.

And then it stopped suddenly, before it had even really started. And he died.

But now he’s not dead.

He sits there for a minute. Just thinking, silently. His hair’s fallen into his eyes but he can’t really move it. His hands are still chained to the table, tight enough that he can’t adjust at all.

It’s obvious he’s in BLi headquarters. Where, which building, he doesn’t know.

Maybe the corporate high rise. He’s heard rumors from DJ Hot Chimp of the lower levels being detainment floors. Maybe that’s what this is.

He needs to get out.

He starts making a plan in his head, not daring to say it out loud step-by-step like he usually does. He’s almost a hundred percent sure he’s being monitored. It would be unusual if he wasn’t, considering how his face is plastered over every single _EXTERMINATE_ poster in the Zones. There’s no way they would even chance losing their precious catch now.

He needs to find out what time it is.

How long he’s been here.

Why he isn’t dead. Which building he’s in. An escape route. Where Kobra, Ghoul, and Jet are. The girl. Is she safe? Did she—

His thoughts are cut off by a sharp pain that rears up in his abdomen, almost like he’s been stabbed. His head goes back and he squeezes his eyes shut, hissing with the burn.

It spreads into his chest, near his heart. His heart starts beating faster, louder.

He can hear it. It’s too loud. He shouldn’t be able to hear it. _boomboomboomboomboom_ —

What’s happening?

Then his head. Oh, god. Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong. His mind is on fire. It’s like lava’s been poured inside his brain.

His nose starts bleeding and blood drips down his lips, into his mouth. It’s salty.

_boomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomvboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboom_

Like a bomb.

It speeds up.

He’s seeing flashes of light. Hearing sirens.

Hearing a voice. _THE AFTERMATH IS SECONDARY._

Pressure. So much. Too much. His brain is going to explode. Little lights devour his vision.

His head. His heart.

_boomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboom_

He passes out.

* * *

 Jet Star has a massive headache.

It’s like someone’s taking a hammer to his forehead and keeps on pounding. Or if an elephant’s walking across his brain. _Thump, thump, thump._

It’s so bad that he can’t think. He literally can’t think.

He wants to shut it off.

All of it. The noise.

There’s no noise.

But it feels like it’s there, something is; it’s a rock concert of static in his head turned up too loud.

He likes rock music.

Just not this kind.

His eyes are closed; haven’t opened yet, but the buzzing hasn’t gone away. It’s gotten stronger.

Jet figures he should open his eyes. So he does.

He’s freezing.

And that’s because he’s lying on his back on an examination table. His shirt and jacket are gone. The metal is stinging his bare skin.

He shivers involuntarily from the temperature, and then again when his headache flares up, and along with it, newfound roaring nausea. He retches but nothing comes up.  

His thoughts are scrambled.

 _Scrambled eggs_ , he thinks. He hasn’t had scrambled eggs in years.

He prefers omelets.

The room looks medical—

Like a… surgery…

Operation…

 _Operating room_. That’s what it’s called.

That’s not good at all.

He moves his arm and can feel blood slosh around inside his arteries. It’s… sloshy.

He’s losing his mind.

For some reason he finds this funny. He giggles.

Is he on drugs?

He’s never taken drugs. Not that he remembers.

The room is swirly. It’s like those little hypnotize-circle things. Is he being hypnotized?

He doesn’t see a magician anywhere.

Are the magicians the ones who hypnotize people?

 _No_ , he answers himself. _They pull rabbits out of hats._

Rabbits. One time he and Kobra made rabbit stew.

It almost tasted worse than PowerPup.

Almost.

He hears circus music now. It’s like the kind you hear on a carousel. Has he ever been on a carousel?

No.

Maybe ‘cause he gets motionsick.

But he doesn’t. You can’t have motion sickness and ride in a car with Party Poison. It can’t be done.

He giggles again. _Party Poison._ What kind of name is that?

A voice as loud as thunder startles him. It’s coming from a TV he hadn’t realized was there. It’s displaying a black-and-white message over top of a smiley face. Better Living’s logo.

_WE CAN FIX YOU._

You need a toolbox to fix things.

* * *

 Fun Ghoul blinks and finds himself inside a tube.

It’s less like a tube, actually, and more like a white elevator. There’s a floor-to-ceiling mirror stretching across one side of it. A blank television screen is on the other wall.

He stares at his reflection. There’s bruises all across his arms, some on his face. They’re ugly, painting his body in splotches of black, purple, and yellow. Like an artist mixed a bunch of watercolors together to create a hideous blotch across a canvas.

In this case, he’s the canvas.

They disappear under his sleeves. There’s probably more underneath his clothes.

The flesh is so bruised in some places that it could be likened to a rotting banana peel. He cringes, even though they don’t hurt.

Bruises are supposed to hurt. These don’t. Why?

That’s a mystery he’ll ponder later, because now his attention is on the gaping, scorched hole in the middle of his shirt.

Where a laser pierced his lung.

He was holding back the Dracs and ‘crows, giving enough time for Jet Star and the kid to save themselves. He wasn’t gonna make it out anyway.

Party and Kobra were already dead. He purposely tried not to look at their motionless bodies as he fired.

Then lasers slammed into his chest, and one found his lung, which was promptly punctured. He couldn’t breathe after that and went down without another thought. He didn’t even get to see if Jet knew what happened.

_Oh, shit._

Did Jet and the girl get away?

And more importantly, why is he alive?

You’ve got to have working lungs to be alive.

Unless he isn’t. Unless this is heaven.

But he never expected to make it to heaven, and he definitely didn’t expect heaven to look like an elevator from a Battery City penthouse. Maybe it’s hell?

Nah. Not enough fire.

He doesn’t believe in either of those, anyway.

The sound of a ceiling fans whirs. Ghoul looks up.

There’s no ceiling fan.

The television turns on. One phrase is written across the screen. The BLi logo flashes for two seconds before disappearing.

_HAVE YOU SMILED TODAY?_

He blinks again and then he’s sprawled face-down in the dirt. Sun beats down on his back.

_What the hell?_

* * *

 A machine flatlines.

* * *

  **SCARECROW Unit**

**Procedure Report #38648327**

**Battery City**

Designation: #7518

Alias: “Party Poison”

Classified: **EXTREMELY DANGEROUS**

Time of death: 1:51 AM

Treatment: [REDACTED]

Status: alive

 

**SCARECROW Unit**

**Report #38648328**

**Battery City**

Designation: #7810

Alias: “Jet Star”

Classified: **DANGEROUS**

Time of death: 2:01 AM

Treatment: [REDACTED]

Status: alive

 

**SCARECROW Unit**

**Report #38648329**

**Battery City**

Designation: #9021

Alias: “Fun Ghoul”

Classified: **DANGEROUS**

Time of death: 1:59 AM

Treatment: [REDACTED]

Status: alive

Notes: Returned to Zone 2. _35.056507, -116.017463._

Under surveillance. Watch carefully.

 

**SCARECROW Unit**

**Report #38648330**

**Battery City**

Designation: #8111

Alias: “The Kobra Kid”

Classified: **EXTREMELY DANGEROUS**

Time of death: 1:53 AM

Treatment: [REDACTED]

Status: ??

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thoughts??
> 
> stuff'll get more interesting soon. hopefully.


	3. Chapter 3

A millennium later, light sears his eyeballs. Even the pink inside of his eyelids isn’t enough to stop it.

He jerks awake. Lifts his head from the ground. His body is stiff.

The blinding light fades into a black sky. He’s back out in the desert in the middle of the night.

Somehow. And he’s alone.

It’s dark in every direction he turns.

He rubs his neck, squints. Then suddenly freezes.

It’s her.

She’s a mysterious figure, shrouded in nebulas. The patterns of a thousand constellations adorn her cloak. She's the night, space, all of time.

Her hands are wrapped in bandages and neck weighed down with gaudy yellow jewelry. A feathery headdress rests atop her head.

She’s wearing a phoenix mask.

Just like in Jet’s legends. Fairy tales Party used to dismiss as kids’ bedtime stories.

He’d always doubted the validity of them. Now, as he kneels in the sand, he’s not so sure if Jet was ever really wrong.

She pushes a battered shopping cart filled with masks and mementos from Killjoys long gone. He knows who she is, now, without a doubt. And he, strangely, is unafraid.

He wonders if his mask is one of the many in the cart.

“Party Poison.” The Phoenix Witch’s voice is echoey. It rings like bells, interrupting his thoughts. The sound is commanding and comforting to his ears. “Come here, child.”

He obeys; his feet shuffle toward her automatically.

“You are supposed to be dead.”

He knows.

“But your time in this life has not yet run out.”

He knows, too, that she’s looking at him, even though he can’t see her eyes. But he can feel her steady gaze.

“So this time, I will allow Better Living Industries’s attempt to cheat death. Use this second chance as an opportunity to improve the world. Or at the very least, live your life to the fullest.

“You have great potential, boy. Use it wisely.”

He nods, not realizing until then that his legs are trembling.

“Farewell, dear. Until we meet again.”

She waves a hand and all becomes dark once again.

* * *

 Shit shit shit shit shit _motherfucking_ shit. 

He’s in Zone Two.

Fun Ghoul knows this for sure because he recognizes the Route Guano road sign. It’s the one with Cherri Cola’s symbol graffitied across the front. The DJ always swears it wasn’t him who did it.

He stands up and looks at the sky. It’s just past noon.

His head starts spinning. He’s confused, and, for good reason, terrified to blink again.

He sits back down.

“Let’s run through this,” he mumbles to himself.

He’s sitting on the side of Route Guano. He’s alone. His pants are ripped at the knee. He’s bruised everywhere. His raygun is nowhere to be found. He’s hungry. Thirsty. Needs to piss. Can’t really get a deep breath, but whether that’s a sign of an oncoming panic attack or a punctured lung, he doesn’t know.

He also doesn’t know if any of the other Four are alive.

Well, he saw Party and Kobra go down.  

Those were real rays, too. He would know. Obviously.

What about Jet?

And the girl—

_Fuck._

He can’t do this. They can’t be dead. What’s he gonna do?

_Oh, my god._

He’s going to be alone again.

He can’t do this. Not again. Not again.

He can’t do this.

Not again.

A crow caws somewhere.

He doesn’t have anywhere to go.

Not again.

The nearest hideout, an old, trashed rest stop, is about twenty miles away. He thinks.

It’ll be night before he gets there. And that’s when the Dracs come out in droves, more than during the day. It’s when every sensible ‘runner is hunkered down behind shelter or driving for their lives.

Ghoul starts walking.

* * *

 “His nervous system is not responding to the stimulants.”

“Administer Aeternex, two hundred milligrams.”

“Are we getting a response?”

“Yes. A faint pulse.”

“Good. Put him under again.”

“This soon? With his heart? Are you positive that—”

“Put him under again. That is an order, not a suggestion.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

 He’s floating.

Through the void.

Endless void.

At least the static’s stopped.

Visions come to him in snapshots. They’re not over before the next one overtakes it, like raindrops sliding down a window.

First is a little girl. She has hair like him. She’s crouching down to pick up a flower.

“Look,” she grins. “It’s good luck.” She holds it out to him.

Blue polka dots splatter that image and then fade away.

A redheaded dude. “We need to stop for supplies soon.” He licks his lips and reads a map. “We have, like, no friggin' food at all.” He talks out of the side of his mouth.

A short, black-haired man. He wears a mischievous grin. “I traded your flashlight for a pack ‘a cigs.”

Then a blonde guy. He wears a red jacket and a serious expression. “You an’ me both got a helluva problem.”

They do?

“We’re both kinda dead. And that’s kinda not good, y’know.”

Oh. Yeah.

“You got a way outta this?”

Nope.

“‘Cause it kinda sucks.”

He agrees. The void gets boring if you stay too long.

“You’re hallucinating, you know that?”

He figures.

“They’re gonna try t’ get you back. That’s what they’re doin’ with me. So you’ll be next, prob’ly, soon. Their drugs fucked you up a lot.” He shrugs. “I gotta go. Hang in there, Jet, all right?”

All right.

He fades away, like whispers on a gust of wind.

So does Jet Star.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jet's and ghoul's city names come from @upthrust-the-volume's headcanons on tumblr. go follow!!

Jet Star struggles to open his eyes.

Regaining consciousness is a battle, and he’s losing it. His eyelids feel impossibly heavy, weighed down with sleep or Better Living’s drugs or something else.

His mind is scattered, but he’s trying to pull the pieces back together. His senses come back in waves.

First, he hears the monotonous beeping of a heart monitor, the little buzzing of fluorescent ceiling lights that you can only make out when the room is otherwise silent.

Then the sickening scent of chemical products, artificial freshness pumped in and out of the ceiling vents to mask the medical smell.

It can’t ever really be hidden. Dumping more roses on top only enhances the final burning of your nostrils as the smell floods in.

Then the cold, which is a completely foreign concept of Better Living’s. The desert heat is warm and comforting; the city air is always ten degrees colder than normal.

Then the taste. Just cold, like ice.

Then sight, but this one is different. He can’t see out of his right eye, but that’s normal, ever since the firefight. He’s gotten used to it; his other senses have started to make up for it.

But he can’t really look around, and that’s owing to the fact that a blindfold is over his eyes and all he sees is fields of white. It’s wrapped tight enough that he can just barely notice the way it squeezes his head.

As he shakes his head a few times, trying to loosen or jar it, the atmosphere of the room changes. Gets colder.

A door opens.

Cold, cold, cold. Everything in Battery City is cold.

Heels click on tile flooring. He feels the presence of another person.

“Angél Martínez.”

His skin prickles.

Cold like icebergs.

It’s not the way she says it, which is completely incorrect and American-ified, but it’s how she knows it at all. He’s horrified. He’s never gone by that name.

The only reason he even knows it’s his is because his old group of ‘runners, the five that took care of him when he was a little kid, were told by his mother. She went into labor, named him, and then died the next day from complications.

No one should know that name except him and the five ‘joys, but they’re all long dead.

How does she know?

Icicles.

“You’re wondering how I know that, I’m sure.” The woman—he’s sure it’s a woman; he can smell her perfume—leans closer. “To answer your unspoken question, Better Living Industries knows everything. And if we don’t, we find a way.”

She pauses for a beat. “Though some may argue our methods are outdated, they get the job done.”

Methods?

She answers that too.

She's dumping so much information on him and he doesn't have time to process any of it. 

“A bit of context. In this particular instance, torture was the key to the information. In fact, your ally Daniel Russo was very open with the information about all four of the Fabulous Killjoys after enough electric shocks.”

Daniel… Ghoul? They have Ghoul? Ghoul’s alive?

Electric shocks?

How does she know his name?

What about the others?

Do they have the girl?

So many questions in less than a second.

“We’ve been after you four for years. And until two days ago, we were still on the lookout.” He can hear the way her words turn up at the end; she’s smiling.

“Fun Ghoul, as you call him, has been very helpful.”

“What did you do to ‘im?” Jet’s voice shakes.

Ghoul would never give up his real name, or Jet’s if, somehow, he knew what it was. A birth name is practically the key to a person’s identity. If Better Living knows your name, they know everything about you.

“Well, that’s none of your concern, now, is it?” she trills back. “Unless, of course”—the heels click again; she’s walking around his chair—“You’d like to provide us with more information. This could be so, so easy. Information about rebel activity, the location of pirate DJ Dr. Death-Defying, hidden safe houses in the Zones, anything at all.”

Never.

He stays silent.

It’s so cold.

“Well, if you must be that way. Perhaps the painkillers are still in effect; perhaps you’re still so desensitized to the reality of what’s really going to happen if you stay silent. The technician did administer nearly a triple dose of the drugs your first time around, the reason you had to be resuscitated previously. But next time, of course, you’ll receive nothing for the pain.

“The time you will need it the most.”

Click, click, click.

She’s gone.

So cold.

* * *

This time, Party Poison is in a different room.

It’s cold, so cold.

He’s not sure when he wakes up, if he was ever really asleep. All he knows is that his surroundings changed, and there’s an image of a feather in the back of his head.

It’s familiar; he should know it.

He just can’t exactly place it.

Achingly familiar.

He sits up. His wrists are still cuffed to a table, ankles to the steel legs of his chair. It’s like an interrogation room.

White, all walls, no windows.

He's suddenly more aware of his body, its inner workings. There's a sensation that he hasn't felt before. 

Something's running through his veins, adrenaline or something like it. He can’t sit still. His foot is tapping against the ground like it has its own free will.

It’s like there’s a Mad Gear song stuck in his head, pumping his blood for him.

He feels empowered. He feels like he can take on the whole damn world and come back unscathed. The feeling...

It’s power.

… is it?

He knows what real strength, real power feels like.

It’s when he’s speeding down a dirt road with no other cars in sight.

It’s when people stop and turn their heads when he and everyone else walk into the building.

It’s when he sees his face on the EXTERMINATE posters that BLi hangs up, when he knows that he’s such a threat to the city they feel they have to warn people.

It’s when he’s willing to risk his life to protect the girl and the others.

This is not the same feeling.

He’s missing the passion.

No, this isn’t real. Whatever this is.

It’s fake. Synthetic.

Is that the same thing?

There’s no way to put it in words. The closest he can come to describing it is something like manufactured emotions. Something he wouldn’t put past Better Living.

Isn’t this kind of like he felt on the pills, years ago? It was either emptiness or unsettling content. Nothing else. Never anxiety. Never worry. Neutral and positive emotions only.

After all, the company’s stanza is _THE AFTERMATH IS SECONDARY._ Pushing full ignorance on all the city’s inhabitants. Ignorance is bliss, isn’t it?

Party Poison could almost laugh at that.

The company’s got no limits, after all. They think they can control death.

 _They think,_ Jet’s said before. _But they’re wrong. No one can control emotion, mortality. That kinda stuff is up to the universe._

Party Poison remembers those words and then tries to force himself to stop feeling that feeling.

He takes a deep breath, the same calming techniques Kobra uses in the middle of a panic attack. They work for his brother. But apparently, not for him. 

It does nothing. His heartbeat barely changes, still jack-hammering against his chest. The feeling doesn’t go away.

He stops trying after five minutes of slow breathing. At least he’s aware of it. What’s real and what’s not.

He thinks.

He thinks he knows.

He doesn’t want to dwell on it.

With that out of the way, his thoughts turn to something else. He needs a distraction before the impact of what’s happening catches up with him and he can’t process it.

Someone very obvious is missing from his surroundings.

Head Exterminator Korse is nowhere to be found, and that’s a little concerning.

According to the intercepted city broadcasts, transmissions, and messages, Korse is out to get Party Poison. According to words from the man himself during a previous clap gone bad, “the very second infamous Killjoy rebel Party Poison is obtained, and he will be, mark my words, I will be there to laugh at his misfortune.”

This obviously counts as misfortune, but there’s no laughing SCARECROW in sight.

Is that good or bad?

Is he about to show up?

Party Poison’s thinking about it too much. Too many thoughts. Too many thoughts.

Too many. Too much.

Oh, god, he doesn’t want to die. Korse will kill him if he sees him.

He doesn’t want to die again.

This is too much. He... needs to—he has to stop this. He’s g-gotta focus, not let—he won’t let his thoughts be scattered. He won’t be—he won’t get scared.

Party Poison closes his eyes and starts counting out loud. His shaky voice rings out into the empty room with each number.

He makes it to four hundred fifty-three. Then the lights shut off and ear-splitting alarms start blaring.

* * *

 Ghoul remembers walking like this years ago, no destination in sight or mind, just trying to get to a place with water. He's been walking for days, it seems. He's exhausted and sunburned. 

Somehow, he's still alive. 

It’s a funny parallel, then and now. Both times he’s in tattered, ragged clothes. Both times he’s starving.

Both times he’s lonely.

Both times he’s utterly, profoundly alone.

He keeps going.

Mile after mile.

One step after another after another after another after another after another after another.

Fun Ghoul doesn’t stop walking until his legs give out and he drops to his knees in the gritty desert sand. He slumps over.

He lays there for quite a while, feeling the sand against his cheek and the warmth beating down on his back. It’s weird, how calm he is now. Nothing really matters anymore. 

His throat and mouth are dry; he licks his lips to try to moisten them. A couple of grains of sand end up in his mouth and he doesn’t bother to spit them out.

He closes his eyes.

Maybe he could just lie here for a while.

Maybe he’ll fall asleep, and then he’ll wake up, and then it’ll be all a dream and he’ll be in the trans-am riding shotgun with Party Poison driving and smiling at him and Jet Star, the girl, and the Kobra Kid singing along to the radio from the backseat.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

* * *

 "We’re getting nothing out of him.”

“Nothing?”

“He won’t even tell us his name. We’ve tried isolation, electric shocks, waterboarding, intense interrogation. Nothing.”

“Not a word?”

“Affirmative. He refuses to budge. We’ve done all we can. He’s unconscious now.”

“Fine. We have the other two. They will break. Dispose of him.”

“Where?”

“Zone Four.”

“Yes, ma’am.”


	5. Chapter 5

Water splashes over his head.

Wet strands of hair stick to his face, along with what feels like half the Zones’ worth of sand.

He blinks. The sun’s really fuckin' bright.

“Watchu doin’ out here, man? You one ‘a them waveheads or something?”

A boy with a spiky purple mohawk is leaning over him.

He looks a few years older than the girl, around ten or eleven. He doesn’t have a weapon in his hand, just a backpack covered in dust and dirt, so that’s a relief.

Ghoul tries to get up, but he’s too weak; he only manages to roll over onto his back.

“Nah,” he answers, but his voice is so dry that it’s more of a croak than words. He tries again. “Nah.”

He struggles into a sitting position. His muscles feel like spaghetti.

“You okay?” the boy asks. He settles down cross-legged next to Ghoul and pulls out a canteen of water.

“Nah,” he repeats for the third time, eyeing the water.

The kid unscrews the bottle and takes a swig, then hands it over.

Ghoul takes it and downs the whole thing, water spilling down his chin and onto his shirt. He doesn't care.

“Who are you?” he asks after replacing the cap. It suddenly dawns on him that he just drank what might be the kid’s entire water ration for the day.

“M’ name’s Volume,” the boy says. He talks fast and slurs some of the words into each other; his accent sounds like he’s from somewhere in rural Three. “I’m allowed to be out here all by m’self today; I’m s’posed to get supplies for my family from the farmers’ market over in One. My mama said to be careful an’ not talk to any waveheads on my way there, but you weren’t moving and I wanted to see if you were dead.”

The kid sounds a little too excited about that last part, but he did give him water, so Ghoul lets that go. “Why _you_ out here?” he asks after pausing a moment to breathe.

“Dunno,” the Killjoy answers honestly. His stomach rumbles violently, reminding him of how long it’s been since he’s eaten. He doesn’t even know.

He doesn’t even know what day it is.

The boy pursues his lips and looks Ghoul up and down. It’s like he’s being inspected, and he stares back warily.

“Tell you what,” the kid says finally, “I’ll give you some ‘a my lunch, and you tell me how come you got to be a wavie.”

“I’m not a wavehead,” Ghoul says. He rubs the back of his neck, pulling off his now-soaked t-shirt and wringing it out over his head so the water drips down. It helps cool him off a little. He’s probably sunburned everywhere; he feels… crispy.

“Then say why you’re lying out here, if you’re not.” The boy eyes him dubiously. “What’s your name? Mama said that waveheads forget their own names after bakin’ outside for too long. Happen to you?”

He takes the half of a sandwich the kid holds out and devours it before answering, chewing with his mouth open. He swallows. “No. It’s Fun Ghoul.”

The kid jumps up in surprise, spilling the sandwich crumbs from his lap. His mouth drops open. “Like from the Fabulous Four?”

“Uh huh.”

“Damn, I know you! Never seen a photo of you before, but my family knows all ‘bout you. I heard what happened to all you on the radio! How you went into Bat City to get your girl back, and fought Korse and the Director, and how you almost got out!”

He pauses for another deep breath. “Wait. But they said you were dead. They said all you died. How come you’re still here? You a zombie?”

First a wavehead, now a zombie. Next he’ll be an actual ghoul. “Not a zombie. I… don’t really know. I thought I died. Maybe I did. I don’t know. I just woke up here.”

He leaves out the part about the mirror and the bruises that still haven’t started hurting. That’s what’s still puzzling him.

The kid whistles, strokes his beardless chin. He’s in such deep thought, looking so intense, that it’s almost funny.

“Hm. I heard that the doctor sometimes’ll make stuff up about ghostings t’ help get the dracs off people’s tails e’ry once in a while, but he sounded real serious when I heard ‘im.”

Hope flutters up in Ghoul’s chest. “Did you hear about my crew? Are they alive?”

 _Please say they’re alive_ , is what he thinks.

“Don’t know, my guy. Said everybody was dead. But you’re not, so I don’t know what to think ‘bout this whole thing anymore.”

Fuck.

The flutter’s gone.

The kid doesn’t notice the despair creep in as he turns to Ghoul and starts rambling. “Man, I’ve always wanted to meet you all. My daddy said that all you guys were famous and that you’re the best shooter in the Zones, and that Party Poison’s the greatest leader and he wins firefights ‘gainst Korse all the time and that Jet Star’s super strong and that he can bench two fifty and that Kobra is a kung fu master who can chop dracs’ heads off! ‘S that all true?”

Ghoul nods absentmindedly. He’s still thinking about how Dr. D announced them all dead.

Maybe because they are all. Except him.

He’s going to be all alone now.

Please no. Not again. Not again.

He stands up suddenly, his head spinning from both dehydration and rising panic. The boy scrambles to his feet. “Where you goin’?”

“Don’t know.”

“I can bring you to the market. I’m going there. You know where it is?”

“No.”

“C’mon. You can tell me more stories about fightin’ BLi while we walk.” The kid starts off with a purpose in his stride. “An’ maybe somebody there knows what’s goin’ on with all you not being dead. If you’re actually not dead…”

He looks like he’s still hanging onto the zombie theory.

Ghoul stares for a minute, then finally trails behind, stepping in the footprints created by the kid. “Okay,” he says.

Does he really have a choice?

* * *

He’s only in the dark for ten seconds before the emergency lights turn on. They’re red and dimmer than the normal ones, casting an eerie glow around the room. The sirens screech on.

What’s going on?

He tugs on the chains bounding him to the table, scoots his chair away. It’s a dumb idea—dumber than his normal ideas, at least—because he almost tips over when he tries. He steadies himself at the last possible moment.

There’s shouting from the hallway, and the sound of running footsteps. His heartbeat speeds up even more.

Is this a raid? Did someone escape? What’s going on?

The sound of crashing plaster fills his ears. The sleek white door bursts open.

A figure in all black wearing a balaclava jumps into the room, raygun at their side.

He hopes that that raygun isn’t for him.

“Party Poison?” Their voice is muffled and unfamiliar.

He nods slightly, a little terrified and a little in awe.

The figure must realize this, because they rush to explain while taking in the sight of his bonds. “Friend of Pony’s. You don’t know me. There’s a group here to get you guys out.”

Party starts, catching the last part suddenly. “You said “you guys”. You mean the other three? And the girl? Are they alive?”

“Doesn’t matter. Whoever we can find.” They reach in their pocket and pull out a bobby pin, twisting it inside the lock by his left wrist cuff. In less than a minute he’s free, rubbing the raw skin on his wrist.

Maybe they’re alive. What if they’re all here?

What if he can find them?

“We gotta go. Only ten minutes ‘fore the place detonates, and we hafta meet up next to the Rage Club in the Lobby.”

“What the—detonate?” He’s out the door now, following his rescuer’s lead. They’re running down dozens of corridors, each identical to each other except for the bizarre abbreviations on each door’s plaque.

“We’re blowin’ it the fuck up. Come on.”

They sprint in silence and Party Poison takes a second to realize how good it feels to move around. He has no idea how long he’s been a prisoner of BLi’s, but he’s been sitting down long enough to make his legs stiff.

They round a corner and Party Poison crashes into the masked figure, throwing them both off balance. “Wait. This isn’t the right hallway. Shit. I’m lost.”

“What floor is this?”

“I-I don’t know. Twelfth or something. Fuck.” They fumble for something in their pocket, shoving their raygun in Party’s hand. “I think I’ve got a diagr—”

They stop in the middle of their sentence and fall backwards, eyes wide open and glazed. Smoke comes up from a hole in their stomach.

Party freezes.

Korse stands at the other end of the hallway, his gun pointed at right at Party’s chest.

Korse smiles.

A horrible flashback plays through his head.

Party Poison does the only thing he can at that moment.

He fires blindly and takes off running, nearly tripping over the limp body on the ground.

Judging by the pain-flecked grunt from the other end of the hallway, Party’s hit him somewhere. He doesn’t know where, if it’s enough to stop Korse pursuing him. He doesn’t turn around to check.

He makes it to a stairway, pursued by shouting and various lasers. He goes down the stairs three at a time, almost tripping. He lands hard on his right foot on the last one and feels the bones in his ankle jar.

He doesn’t stop.

A ray misses his head and a potted plant next to him explodes. Shattered clay and dirt splatter everywhere.

He swerves left and ends up near a reception desk. The footsteps increase in number and volume and he only has time to duck behind the counter.

He makes himself as small as possible next to a bundle of cords and wires and tries not to breathe.

Shoes pound against the floor. Party starts shaking.

The footsteps get slower.

They stop.

He closes his eyes.

No one makes a sound.

He counts to sixty-five in his head before opening his eyes.

“There you are,” the SCARECROW purrs, peering down at him.

* * *

 “The fucker doesn’t even have anything.”

“Search him again! Did you look everywhere? Everyone has some kinda shit. Cigarettes or _somethin’_.”

Rough hands pull the Kobra Kid up off the ground as the world swims into view. He groans as someone rifles through his pockets.

“Dammit. He’s wakin’ up.” He gets thrown against something blunt. His back screams in protest.

One of his eyes is swollen shut and the other one’s been reduced to a puffy slit. His jaw aches.

Three guys and one girl look down on him distastefully. “Wouldn’t the _great Kobra Kid_ carry better shit on him? You don’t even gotta fuckin’ raygun,” the girl says.

“Shuddup,” he mumbles. He doesn’t even know what he’s saying. It feels like he’s talking through a mouthful of cotton.

One of the dudes kicks him in the ribs. He whimpers, curls up as they laugh him.

“We could turn ‘im in to Better Living,” someone suggests. “Get the thousand carb reward.”

“Didn't they already try t’ kill him? And they couldn't so they got rid ‘a him ‘stead? Ya really think they wan’ him back?”

He listens to their conversation, wincing with each breath.

The one who kicked him shrugs. “They ain't taken the signs down yet; I say the offer’s still valid.”

“Nah, I’m not tryin’ to get dusted today,” the girl responds. “Just leave him here. We got better shit to do.”

They consider it.

“All right,” one of the guys says. “But first…”

He delivers a hard kick to Kobra’s stomach, making him double back over on the ground. “I’ve always wanted to do that. The four motherfuckers think they’re so goddamn better than everyone else.”

He crouches down to where the Kid’s huddled, willing them to go somewhere else. “Hope that hurt,” he tells Kobra directly. Then they all shuffle away, mount motorcycles, and speed off into the distance.

The first thing he does once he’s sure they’re gone is sit up and puke. He vomits up all the contents of his stomach until there’s nothing left, then leans back and wipes his mouth.

He’s so confused, and so scared.

He feels small out here, crouched in the dust with a bloody nose and black eye. He doesn’t even have a raygun, just like the girl said.

His jacket’s gone; so’s his shirt and jeans. He’s wearing a white undershirt stained with blood and dirt and baggy gray pants that don’t quite fit.

He feels greasy.

It fucking  _sucks_.

He can’t process all of this. If he tries to think about it anymore than he already is, his brain will most likely explode.

This is why he lets Jet do the panicking.

That sends other thoughts racing through his head. Bad ones.

What if they’re all dead except for him?

_please no_

They can’t be.

_all dead_

No, not Fun Ghoul.

_he’s dead_

Not Jet.

_gone forever_

Party?

_dead_

Please not Party.

_yes_

No.

_he’s dead_

No.

_THEY’RE ALL DEAD_

“ _No!_ ” he yells.

The sound rips out of his throat, a strangled noise that sounds amplified in the quietness of the Mojave.

“ _No!_ ”

* * *

 “Let’s begin. Tell us your name.”

It’s the same lady.

She’s faceless now, though, faceless like all the others he’s seen in the past few hours, with just a blank space where her face should be. A muddled gray cloud that fogs all her features.

It must be the drugs, or whatever they injected him with. Or his mind just decided to shut off and not have his eye see from that point up.

“No,” he says.

They already know it anyway.

“This doesn’t have to be difficult. Tell us your name.”

“No,” he says.

“Tell us your name.”

“No.”

She clicks a button somewhere and an electric volt rips through his skin. He cries out.

“Tell us your name.”

“No.”

Another shock. It’s stronger this time. His body jerks up involuntarily.

“Tell us your name.” She doesn’t even wait this time. He feels it down to his bones.

It’s agony.

“Jet Star,” he whispers.

It doesn’t satisfy her.

“Your real name.”

“Jet Star.” It’s his real name. It’s the only one that he’s ever used. It’s who he is.

“Your real name.”

“I did,” he spits. Every moment hurts.

“Liar,” she hisses. “What is your given, city-approved name?”

He braces himself. “Jet Star.”

The next one’s so bad he blacks out. But not for long enough.

“Angél.” He’s too weak to try anymore.

“Are you sure?” She clicks the button again.

He passes out again.

“Angél,” he cries upon waking once again, dragging himself out of blackness, anguish reflected pitifully in his voice. “Angél Martínez.”

“Thank you. See? We’re making progress now, aren’t we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a tumblr now! @discocritic. there may be good content. there may not. i dunno. follow me and see, i guess?
> 
> thoughts on this chapter??


	6. Chapter 6

“Then we had to help them. I mean, we couldn’t just leave. They were starving, it was the middle of the night, and Party was still going through withdrawal from the city drugs… they probably would’ve died if we hadn’t found them. So Jet decided they’d join our crew.”

It’s a heartwarming story, but the fact that Ghoul's told it three times in the last two hours makes it a little less heartwarming and a little more repetitive.

His throat’s starting to hurt. The kid barely lets him breathe before asking another question.

“I always wondered how you all met… I gotta tell my friends when I see ‘em: _‘man, look at this guy here, it’s Fun Ghoul from the Fab Four and he’s a zombie, can you believe it?’_ and they’ll be like ‘ _no way, dude, that’s fuckin' awesome!_ ’ And—”

Then the kid suddenly makes a face and looks at him guiltily. “Don’t tell no one I just cussed ‘cause my mama’ll find out and yell at me, ‘cause I ain’t allowed to cuss yet.”

“I’m not a zombie,”  Ghoul says distractedly, not really hearing what the boy’s talking about now. _I’m not a zombie._ He’s also said _that_ a million times in the past two hours.

“That’s what zombies say, though. That’s what they all try to tell ya!”

“Do you think zombies even talk?”

The boy just puts his fingers to his lips and shakes his head.

It’s evening now, and the sun is slowly making its way down below the horizon, taking the unbearable heat along with it. Some flies buzz around his face and he swats at them, wishing he had his bandanna. It’s in the trans-am, wherever the trans-am is.

He misses that fucking car.

It was old, and there weren’t any airbags—did they ever need those, though?—and the air conditioning broke down way too many times, but the damned thing was the closest they had to a house. They tried to keep it clean, but the cupholders always ended up filled with cigarette butts and the floor was inevitably buried underneath a layer of food wrappers and tracked-in dirt.

But they never once had it stolen from them, something that happens a lot to 'joys with cars in the Zones.

Now Ghoul doesn’t even know where the thing _is._

“What you thinkin’ about, my man? You’re bein’ awfully quiet now.” The kid drags out the second syllable in the “awfully”, and for a brief moment it reminds him of the lazy way Jet sometimes talks, quiet and overly-emphasizing the vowels. But then it goes away, and he’s left with just a wisp of a happy memory.

“Nah. Just wondering about my car.” And then he realizes how self-absorbed that sounds, to be worried about his car when three of his friends are missing in action. He rushes to make it sound better. “Like, uh, like how me and the guys are always hangin’ out in there. We have the best times, when Party drives too fast and Kobra turns up the music and our girl tries to color over old newspapers while Jet holds her crayons an’... an' stuff like that."

Thinking about it twists something in his chest.

Longing. That’s what it is.

Longing to have those moments again, to find the other three and the girl and do everything they always do together. Be reckless and laugh as they’re risking just a little too much.

“Is your car decorated? We don’t have one. Gas is too many carbons and all my siblings would try t’ keep it for themselves all the time. But if we did, it'd look _sweet!_ "

“Yeah. Ours is, it's pretty sweet. Actually—” And just like that, he launches himself into an endless tirade of describing each and every symbol on the ‘am and what they all mean, how they got there, and random stuff like whose idea it was to put a cool-ass Joker stick on the bumper—it was his, by the way. Ghoul could rant about the Joker forever. The guy’s fucking  _cool_.

Like, Ghoul even has the same fuckin' Chelsea smile on one side that he does!

Well, not because he did it on purpose. It happened during a violent clap about two years ago. But doesn’t it make him look badass?

“Look, look, look! See those tents? We’re almost there!” The boy jumps up and down, and Ghoul’s thrown out of his scar speculation and brought back into the real world. But he nearly manages to get rid of the nervous, unexplainably paranoid feeling in his stomach, which almost makes him grin.

“Have you been to this one before?” the kid asks.

“No. Like, me an’ Kobra usually get sent out on errands to the flea markets and stuff, but those are mostly in Zone Two or Five. Some of the vendors travel around, though, I think, so there’s always new stuff everywhere.”

They walk through the narrow pathway created by the vendors’ tents. In reality, some are less like tents and more like old blankets draped over the side of a roof, but he gets the idea. The different colors and merchandise give the area a crowded, bustling feel anyway.

Evening is the best time to come to the market; since it’s outside, it’s best to wait until sunset to explore. The temperature goes down to something much more bearable and the outdoors can actually be enjoyed.

They barely walk thirty feet in, admiring all the wares, before the kid grabs Ghoul’s arm and drags him down another row, nearly knocking over a coat rack full of patched denim jackets.  

"Look. Look at that. See, over there, I really _really_ want that toy robot." The boy points at a shelf in one of the booths, where a few battered board games and trinkets rest underneath a film of dust. Ghoul follows his gaze and something about the stuff for sale seems familiar, but he can't place it.

"I saw it last week with my brother and he said that it was too expensive, and we needed food rations an' boring stuff like that, but I would skip dinner for a couple days to get that toy, y'know? 'Cause everybody in my family, all my brothers and sisters, they all gotta bunch of toys but we gotta share and stuff but I still want my own things, y'know? 'Cause—"

He keeps talking, but Ghoul suddenly zones out. He knows that toy.

He sees it every day.

It's the girl's prized toy robot.

She's had it for as long as he's known her. It's her favorite.

They had to drive all the way from Zone Three, once, back to the Paradise Motel to buy it back from Tommy Chow Mein after she left it there.

It's not supposed to be for sale in a crappy market stall.

She loves that toy. She wouldn't give it up for the world.

He shoves through the crowd of neon-clad people that suddenly materialize in his way, sweat glueing his hair to his temples and making his clothes damp. "Where'd you get that?" he demands, his voice louder than he meant it to be. The teenage boy in the booth looks up from his battered Nintendo DS and stares at him.

"Get what?" he drawls, smacking his gum.

Ghoul leans forward. "That toy. In the shelf. That blue and red robot. Where'd you get it?"

"You didn't hear?"

"Hear what?" The kid comes up behind him, still chattering away. Ghoul tunes him out, more focused on the information the other guy's giving him.

"That the Fabulous Four are dead and their girl's bein' held in Better Livin' Towers."

"What the fuck?"

"You jokin' with me? How come you don’t know this? The market's been burstin' with 'runners all week lookin' for bargains on their stuff. Somebody raided their last hideout or somethin' after they died and brought all this shiny stuff here. I can sell this shit for five times the carbs I usually do. They were famous, after all.”

“They’re dead?”

“You slow or somethin’? _Duh,_  they’re dead. Everyone’s talking about it. Went into ‘crow headquarters to try an’ get the girl back—she got caught during a firefight or somethin’—and all got ghosted. Dr. D brought some ‘a his crew as backup but they got in'ercepted on the grid and the city got ahold of the kid again. Poor guys. Overestimated their crew's strength."

"They're dead?" The little boy's eyes widen as the dude nods yes. "So that means Ghoul's really a—"

The words barely leave his lips before Fun Ghoul's lunging at the merchant.

“Liar,” he snarls.

Something snaps inside of him. The rubber band holding him together finally gives out.

He leans forward and grabs the guy’s collar, yanking him closer. “They’re not dead. They can’t be. Better Living can’t have the girl. _You fuckin' liar!_ ”

Ghoul shoves him away and he falls backward into the shelves behind him, sending everything scattering across the ground. Something made of glass shatters. He’s breathing too harshly but he can't get a deep breath.

Ghoul snatches up the little robot.

People are staring at him.

"Look"—the teenager's hands are raised in surrender as he slowly gets up—"'M just telling ya what I heard on the radio. No need to get crazy with me. You close with them or something?"

 _I_ am _one of them._

 _I_ was _one of them._

He just walks away in response, pushes through another gathering crowd that've come to stare at the commotion, and keeps going until he's out of the maze of stalls. The kid follows, sprinting to match Ghoul's furious pace. He finally catches up and starts chattering again.

“So you _are_ a zombie! I knew it! I knew it, man! See, there was this comic I found and had my brother read to me once, and it was abou' a guy that got bit by a zombie and he died but then he came back _as a zombie_ but he looked normal so people didn’t know he was a zombie until one day he started growling and attackin’ people! Like you! You a zombie! I knew it!”

All Ghoul can say to that is, “I wasn’t growling.”

Because he’s thinking too much; bad thoughts are running through his head again and there’s a horrible, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

That’s two, that makes two, two people who said that the Fabulous Four died. And the kid running the booth said that Better Living has the girl. And if Better Living has the girl—

He sits down right where he’s standing, because he’s about to fall over.

He puts his head in his hands, laying the toy to the side, because the world is spinning and suddenly his whole body hurts.

He doesn't know what he was just thinking. _If Better Living has the girl._ It's slipped away.

But he feels like he’s done something terrible.

He doesn't know what that terrible thing is.

He just knows he did _something._

Something _bad_.

But what did he _do_?

His knee nudges the toy and he dimly realizes his patchwork of bruises is hurting now.

* * *

Sometime after the third unsuccessful attempt at getting his information, other people joined the woman. Like her, their faces are all consumed by static.

Jet doesn’t like it, not knowing what they look like. It’s worse imagining it; he’d rather just see the face of his tormentors.

He hears their low murmurs, scratching of pencils on paper, and then he feels the next shock when he refuses to answer or hesitates too long. It’s a pattern now; he knows when to brace himself.

But that doesn’t make it hurt any less.

His senses are dulling by the second and everything is hazy. Until she presses that button and every nerve in his body lights up with agony. Then everything comes back, sharp, zapping sensations that overload his body’s pain receptors.

All he can do is keep his mouth shut, or give them sarcastic answers. He’s holding on as long as he can, especially after being forced to give up his name.

It’s not his real name anymore, never really was, but they know it. Somehow. They’ve heard him admit it. And with that information, they could find out all kinds of things about him. Things even he doesn’t know.

He’s heard the stories.

How everyone has a file. Even if they’ve never set foot in the city before.

“Tell us, now, the location of the pirate DJ Dr. Death-Defying.” They keep interrupting his thoughts.

He shakes his head with all the strength he can muster. “I won’t.”

“You will.”

“You can’t make me.”

“Think again.”

_zzzip._

That’s the sound the shock makes.

“AUGH!”

That’s the sound he makes.

“Would you like to know how your body is receiving the shocks without being attached to any wires?”

He says nothing. He’s shivering. He's barely conscious. His brain won't fade out and save him.

She explains anyway. “Better Living Industries and Battery City have worked for years with different forms of technology. Our advancement in the field of medical technology is one of our proudest accomplishments.

"Upon your arrival, we implanted a sensor into your bloodstream, which is continuing to circulate as we speak. When this button is activated, it sends a signal to the sensor, which will then transfer the shock sensation, in a complicated process that I will not go into at the moment, to the rest of your body. At any moment, I could adjust the setting for a higher electric voltage, which will then have even harsher negative effects against you.

“Believe me, it will hurt much, much more than you think. It would be very beneficial for all of us to have your cooperation.” Her hand hovers over the clicker, and Jet Star draws back and winces automatically.

“You have one chance,” she says slowly. “Tell me everything you know. Or we will find every person who’s ever come in contact with you, and do things to them the horror of which you can’t even imagine.”

He doesn’t—he can’t… he can’t tell her.

He doesn’t want anyone to get hurt.

Telling her would be a betrayal to everyone who’s ever trusted him. He’s lived in the desert his whole life. He knows too much.

But he’s hurting so bad. Physically. Mentally.

He can’t take any more torture.

His chest feels tight.

He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to tell her and put everyone he loves in danger. He also doesn’t want to  _not_ tell her and keep going through this.

“Well?” she asks.

There’s silence for an unbearably long amount of time.

And he tries.

He really, really tries.

But his mind can’t take it anymore, and through tears, the information he’s held back for an hour comes spilling out of his mouth with the hope that she’ll stop.

He doesn’t even know what he’s saying. Names, locations, they all run into each other and he doesn’t stop until he’s gasping for breath.

“Thank you,” she replies coolly a minute later. The other people in the room rise and leave, and it’s only Jet and the woman left in silence.

His face is wet from crying. He can’t believe it. He can’t believe how much he just told her. Or that he gave up and told her anything at all.   

“You’ve been very useful.”

He wants to throw up.

“However.

"It took an irrational amount of time for you to compromise. Therefore, I hope this will serve as a lesson for you. Next time, I hope this process will be through with much quicker."

Her thumb drifts toward the trigger, and right before she presses down, Jet remembers how she increased the setting.

He manages to utter a single word of prayer before it hits all at once.

A thousand bullets ripping through his chest at the same time. His vision simultaneously darkening and erupting in light, leaving him fully blind for a few terrifying moments. It goes on and on and on, excruciating.

His lungs are on fire.

He’s screaming, he’s sure, but he can’t even focus enough to tell.

Each second is an eternity filled with racking pain, pain ripping through his body, pain everywhere—

It takes too long to stop. So long that he's unable to resist, to even stay awake anymore. His strength is just gone. His body is limp.

He drifts in and out of consciousness as hands unbuckle his restraints and yank him up and drag him somewhere. They throw him down; he hits the ground and doesn't even try to move. He hopes they’re going to hurry up and kill him.

Death would be better than going through this again.

* * *

 He’s been wandering for days. He’s dehydrated, hungry, and he hasn’t slept once.

It’s a wonder he’s still alive.

He’s somewhere in the middle of nowhere; has been since he started walking. There’s nothing but dead bushes, sand, and more dead bushes in every direction.

Dead bushes means no water, and no water will soon mean no Kobra.

He’d give anything for a sip of water.

It feels like he’s lost three times his body weight in sweat. It’s pouring from his back, off his face, running down his neck. He's sweated enough to fill up a swimming pool.

He hasn’t taken off his shirt, though, because he can already feel sunburn stretching across his exposed skin. It’s blistered and peeling, and tender to the touch.

If he had water...

His throat is drier than it’s ever been before, and if he speaks it will be hoarse. From yelling and lack of moisture. Maybe he’s lost his voice. Maybe he’s about to die from thirst.

He keeps walking.

He had a water bottle. In the trans-am. It was in the cupholder, resting on top of a pile of cigarette ashes and pencil shavings.

Clean, cool, refreshing water that’s only a memory now.

How long can a person go without fluids?

He thinks about six days. He thinks that’s what he read in a medical handbook back in the city when he was thirteen and had nothing else to do, when the most interesting distraction would be reading instruction booklets and the copyright pages of memoirs.

But in the desert, with the energy-sapping heat and the hotter-than-hell temperature, alone, without any of his crew who are all most likely dead, without any mode of transportation except his own two feet, all he can do is walk.

Mirages dance in the distance, but he’s given up on following them.

This Zone, whichever one it is, is barely more than a barren wasteland. There’s no blessed oases, no shade in sight, and no water. Just sand, and rocks, and all kinds of desert things that he’s sick to death of seeing.

He keeps walking.

Wasn’t there some story about a guy’s staff that cracked open a rock and got water from it?

He could use that guy's help right now.

There’s another mirage in the distance. He just keeps walking.

One day his feet are going to fall off.

It’s not moving. The mirage.

Don’t they move?

He keeps walking.

Maybe it’s a big one.

He keeps walking.

He walks right into it and stops.

And then something miraculous happens: Kobra Kid stands up to his ankles in water, mesmerized by the thing he hasn’t seen in days.

Water.

It suddenly clicks.

He falls to his knees, droplets splashing up at him. At first, he cups his hands and brings whatever water he catches to his mouth, gulping it down faster than he can get more, but then just leans down and laps it up with his tongue like a dog.

It's warm, and little bits of things that may or may not be bugs are floating around in it. He's already swallowed one.

But he doesn't care; he only cares that there is water right here and he is drinking it and it is _so good._

He drinks the sweet, sweet water, the water that’s his whole life right now, until he forces himself to stop and come up for air. Then he splashes it in his face, his hair, over the sunburned areas of his body. It’s fucking  _fantastic._

He was starting to think he’d never see water again.

Kobra kneels in the water, the water that came from nowhere, the water that is his saving grace, for a long time. Appreciating it. Drinking it.

He almost laughs at the absurdity of it.

Water shouldn't taste this good.

But it does and _hallelujah,_ it's so good.

Eventually, he tries to make himself get going, because he needs to find shelter. Shelter won’t just walk up to him. He has to go to it himself.

But the water…

He doesn’t have a canteen or anything to keep it in.

He’ll just drink what he can now and hope it holds him until he makes it to a safe house or another little spot like this. But it’s unlikely that another one exists.

But it’s one hundred percent certain that he will never find shelter if he stays here.

So the Kobra Kid drinks all the water he can, until he's full of it, and heads west, where the sunset is the most spectacular one he’s seen in his entire life.

And he hopes, and he prays, and he doesn’t stop walking until thunder begins to rumble in the distance.

* * *

He tries not to think about it.

Instead, he thinks about where he is now.

They threw him in a cell.

An actual cell. Not another isolated room with sharp cleanliness and synthetic air fresheners, no. Not an interrogation room with a nice chair and handcuffs around his wrists attached to the table either.

This one is a real jail cell, complete with bars and a metal bench and a little toilet in the corner.

The bars are only on either side of him, not in the front. That's blocked by a thick wall and a door that looks tough enough to withstand more than a few strong blows.

He hasn’t tried. He’s scared to death.

Party hasn’t been this scared since his first night in the desert.

He’s tried to ignore fear since then. Being scared makes him feel weak. And he hates that.

He’d done a good job of it until he ended up back here. But he didn’t have a choice.

They had to get the girl back.

He’s worried sick about her.

She’s only a little kid. She can barely take care of herself. She’s just a little  _kid_.

He hopes to the Witch or God or whoever’s out there that the other guys are safe and that they have her. If anything happened to her, he…

He doesn’t know what he’d do.

At least it’s him in here and not her. And not Kobra. And not Jet and not Ghoul.

He hopes they were part of that rescue party. And at the same time, he doesn’t.

He remembers that ‘joy. They’re dead now for sure, lying in a white Better Living body bag, their life wasted for him, and he doesn’t even know what their name was.

Oh, god, he hopes that hasn’t happened to the others.

He hasn’t been able to cry for however long he’s been in here. Not until now. Now, the tears come easily.

He’s. So. Scared.

That look on Korse’s face when he grabbed Party’s arm and dragged him out from under the desk. When he shoved the chloroform cloth over his nose and pulled him along until he blacked out.

He remembers every detail of that cold shark smile. It’s horrible.

Every breath he takes is now plagued with that memory.

He tries not to think about it. He tries to think about anything else as the hours pass in chunks.

Party Poison sits on the cold bench as it leeches the warmth from his legs and thinks.

He’s wearing his own clothes at least. Not his jacket, but his jeans and his t-shirt.  _Keep Smiling,_ reads the yellow print. At the time, it was another subtle middle finger to the City when he found it at one of the Zone markets. Now it’s just ironic.

There's a hole in the bottom of the t-shirt and his oily hair is hanging over his lank face. _Needs to be cut and re-dyed_ , he thinks. Something to look forward to when he escapes.

If he ever—

“Shut up,” he says. 

His voice rings out too loudly. It echoes in the small room, bouncing off the walls and mocking him.

It's enough to jar his head into working properly. No time for tears. Not now. He needs a plan.

Party wipes at his eyes, then stands up and starts pacing.

Better Living Industries has five main buildings, positioned around the middle of the city in a shape that vaguely resembles a star. SCARECROW Headquarters, BLi Surveillance, MouseKat and FactNews Recording Studios, and two others Party can't remember the names of.

He's in Headquarters; he knows that for a fact. Which means he's closest to the Slums, where Bat City doesn't monitor the activity so heavily.

If he can get out of here, he can hide in the Slums for a couple days. Patrols aren't nearly as regulated there as they are in the Zones and the inner city.

But first, there’s several things he still needs to address.

  1. What's happened to him.
  2. What's happened to everyone else.
  3. How to actually get out of the building.



And one of the most unsettling ones,

       4. The constant adrenaline rush that hasn't gone away.

He’s ignored it, like he’s ignored hunger and thirst and the urge to give up. He thinks and he sleeps for ten minutes and he wakes up and does it all again.

It feels like it's been years and it feels like it's been seconds at the same time.

He wants—no,  _needs_ to get out. He needs to be able to move around and drive, and to feel the wind through his hair and hear the sounds of the desert.

He needs to see his crew again.

His brother. His friends. The girl, who's no longer just a little girl that they happen to take care of, who's become as important to him as his own niece or a daughter.

He's a fucking prisoner of Better Living again. The same way he was a prisoner of them when he lived in the city, mindless and numb, just another human robot wandering day after day, but this time he's aware of it.

He hasn’t lost his mind, and that’s what he’s managed to cling to, the fact that his sanity is still there.

He has his mind and he has an incentive.

He can do this.

“ _Good evening._ ”

He nearly jumps out of his skin.

It’s coming from a hidden speaker in the ceiling.

The words echo, so every other empty cell must have one, too, to cause the reverb effect.

He stops pacing for a minute, stands still and waits. It’s a crisp, clear voice that’s just barely loud enough to be annoying. It’s authoritative, and though Party Poison is sure he’s never heard her speak in English, he’s absolutely positive that it’s the voice of the Director.

The Director. The Director, who’s in control of all of Better Living Industries, the head of everything in Battery City.

The Director, and she’s talking to him.

Which means, in short, he’s in a fuckton of trouble.

He knows that, of course. His existence is a rebellion in itself.

He should have died twice, never really should have made it out of the city and into the desert.

And now he’s back in the city for all of SCARECROW to inflict their wrath upon him.

“ _We’ve never had the opportunity to meet face-to-face before, Party Poison. And we will continue to go on never doing so._

 _“But Better Living Industries knows everything about you regardless. Everywhere you’ve been, everything you’ve said, the names of_ every single person  _you’ve ever shaken hands with. We are a megacorporation, and we know everything."_

Party Poison waits, unnerved, for her to continue on how all-knowing they are. It’s on all of the propaganda along with the famous  _THE AFTERMATH IS SECONDARY_. But she switches the subject on him.

_“Therefore, when our offer arises, it would be in your best interest to accept it."_

The speaker makes the clicking noise that means it’s been turned off, and Party Poison is left in stark silence.

What offer?

It's not like he's gonna take it, obviously.

The door at the end of the hallway swings open with a  _bang!_ that makes him jump again.

Two draculoids march in, and then Party is on his feet and reaching for his gun before he remembers he doesn't have it.

After a terrifying moment of freaking out, he uses his brain and realizes that they're not there for him.

They're pushing a person along with them. Well, they're dragging him along more so than escorting him.

Their freakish Dracula masks always make his heart jolt for a split second before he can calm down. He breathes, but something inside tells him not to move another muscle, not to say a word until the dracs are gone.

They dump the new captive on the floor of the cell next door and the prisoner lays there, now motionless, curled up in a tight ball as the draculoids stomp away.

_Party Poison knows this person._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "die for the hype" by yungblud came on while i was editing and i started laughing because the first two verses of the song are practically narrating what's happened so far in this fic...
> 
> anyway, follow me on tumblr @discocritic! 
> 
> love you guys <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't cry bros... well uh just kidding actually you should probably be worried lmao

The water was the Kobra Kid's saving grace, but it came with an annoying consequence: he keeps having to piss every hour.

It’s like clockwork.

Sixty minutes pass, he finds a place under a tree or something and does what he has to do, and then he zips back up and goes on.

How is there even anything left in his bladder?

He’s done it four times so far, which means it’s been four hours since finding the water—and don’t ask how he knows that one piss equals an hour… he can just feel it—and every time he has to keep walking, his feet hurt worse than before.

Don’t get him wrong; his shoes are great, but they weren’t made to go for this long without stopping. Neither was Kobra. At this point, he’s hobbling along more than actually walking with a normal gait, but at least he’s going somewhere.

Know what would be fan-fuckin'-tastic right now?

His motorcycle.

Or the trans-am.

Or, y’know, even a pair of rollerskates. Even though he can’t skate for shit, it beats walking.

There's another clap of thunder in the distance. The sky is turning gray and cloudy.

He doesn't want to get caught in a rainstorm. That would just add to the shit he’s dealing with; traipsing through muddy mixes of sand and dirt and water and probably tripping and breaking an arm.  

Though a shower would be welcome. He could use a rinse. He's grimy.

Last time he walked this long, he and Party went nine miles to pick up a can of gas for the car after getting stranded in the middle of the night. It was Ghoul's turn to fill the tank before they left, but did the bastard do it?

Of course not!

The memory makes him smile.

And then he trips and falls flat on his face.

Because of a pothole, he realizes a second later. It caught his foot at just the right angle. Now he’s lying in the dust and his palms are bleeding.

Dumb pothole.

He'd noticed a while back that there was one about every hundred feet, but somehow he got distracted and didn't see this one. Out of all the ones to not see, it had to be the one he walked right into.

Well, he fuckin' sees it now!

"Stupid pothole," he mutters. Bits of dirt and gravel stick to his knees through the holes in his pants.

At least he didn’t break an arm.

He sits up, hoping no one saw his embarrassing inability to walk. And of course no one saw. He's all alone in the middle of Route Guano. There's not an engine in sight.

Wait.

Scratch that.

A truck's coming.

Kobra scrambles to his feet and runs to the edge of the cement, out of the way, where the weeds try to grow up into the cracks of the road. It’s the first car he’s seen this whole time.

He flags down the truck as it comes barreling down the road. He's waving both arms like a crazy jazz hands professional or something. "Hey! Hey!"

It stops and the driver rolls down the window.

It's a middle-aged man and a woman who's probably his wife. There’s two little kids in the truck bed that gawk at him.

He must look ridiculous—he's sunburned to a crisp, dripping sweat, and has a black eye that hurts like hell. He's just overall not an approachable-looking person at this moment.

Their faces show that they don't seem to immediately know who he is, which is good. When the Fabulous Four are out and about, some people immediately swarm them to ask questions and get autographs. He's never liked the spotlight, and without the other guys the attention would be mortifying. Especially in this situation, when he looks like he's been chained up and dragged a hundred feet down the highway.

They're probably neutrals. They look like a happy family; two parents, two kids, a reliable mode of transportation.

It makes him miss his family, his crew, even more. He blinks.

"Can you—what Zone is this? Where am I?" Kobra asks after he manages to process everything. He blinks to make sure he’s not just seeing things. They don’t disappear, and he could cry with relief. Actual people, right here, that aren't going to beat him up like that other gang.

His jaw still feels funny 'cause 'a that.

The man shrugs and looks at his wife. He's an older guy to be out here, probably forty-something, and she's around the same age. The kids, one girl and one boy, are about six and three respectively.

"Hold on one second, honey," the woman tells Kobra, eyeing him to make sure he’s not going to try to mug them or something. She has a pleasant accent, like she's somebody's Midwestern mom. _She'd be a nice mom,_ he thinks.

The girl could use an actual mother.

Sure, he loves taking care of her, and he knows the other guys do too, but when she gets older—and even now, sometimes—she’s going to want the guidance of someone that isn’t a dude.

(That’s probably, he thinks in hindsight, why she and Chimp get along so well. Every once in a while the DJ watches her while the Fab Four go out on a mission or something, and they have to beg to get her back. It makes him smile.)

Yeah, the girl needs a mother figure in her life.

“Well,” says the woman, startling him. She’d grabbed a map after he had zoned out and she’s studying it now. It's one of those ancient ones, one from before the Wars where it doesn't show the Zone barriers, just a normal map of a normal state.

Of course, California's everything but normal now. That is, unless you call rayguns, radiation of the charts, and brainwashing pills normal.

"Well,” she repeats. “If my navigation skills and sense of direction are working… I’d say we’re at the southwestern edge of Two. I think. If we stayed on track the whole drive through." She looks at Kobra, jerking a thumb at her husband behind the wheel. "He's not the best navigator, y'know, so it's left to me most 'a the time or we'd end up in the middle of the city."

The kids in the back giggle.

But he's still caught up on the location.

Two? How did he make it all the way out to _Two_ when the last time he remembered, he was in SCARECROW Headquarters fighting for his life?

"I…”

He has no words.

He's sweating like there's no tomorrow, he's so tired he could fall asleep right here if he closes his eyes, and he has to pee again.

"Are you lost, honey?"

That's not even the half of it.

"Yeah. Uh. My crew and I… we got separated. I don't know where they are. And I-I'm really worried about them." His voice is raspy. It's the most words he's said at once since he woke up.

Why did he decide to spill his whole life story?

Dammit, he’s regretting this already.

So he shuts his mouth after that and doesn’t tell the full truth. He doesn't explain who he is or why he’s here or how they got separated.

It's also partly because he himself doesn't know how any of that happened.

"Need a ride someplace?" The husband speaks for the first time. He's wearing a baseball cap for with some team logo that Kobra vaguely remembers seeing on the bleachers of some old sports stadium. "'Bout to rain and you don't look like you're going anywhere fast."

"We're on our way to One to visit a couple friends. We can drop you off along the way if you want!" the lady chirps.

They don't look like serial killers. They look nice. Their kids are cute, too; they remind him of the girl once again.

He misses her. He misses all of them.

"Sure," Kobra says, spilling the words out before he can change his mind. The quicker he gets reunited, the better. And not having to walk to wherever they are is just a bonus.

Hopefully, the rest of the crew is at the rendezvous point they all agreed on before storming the city: an underground subway system in Zone One, originally built to aid citizens in Zone-wide travel before being abandoned for bullet trains around the city. 

He hopes they would wait there for him.

"Hop in the back, then," she says, smiling brightly. When she does that, the corners of her eyes wrinkle. It makes her look even more motherly.

And it's decided for him. He can trust this family.

He steps on the back tire and climbs into the truck bed beside the two kids. They watch him curiously. The boy grins and waves.

"I'm Carol," the woman calls back. She sticks her head out the window in an awkward way so he can hear her. "This is my husband Dave, and our babies Mabel and Flynn are back there with you. It should be about two more hours 'til we get there, so hang on tight. You want food?"

Before he can even answer, she nods to the son. He reaches inside a pack next to him and hands Kobra a piece of beef jerky.

"We got lots," Flynn says. He has the same accent as his mom. It's adorable, mixed with the little kid lisp that all three and four-year-olds seem to have.

The truck starts up again and speeds down the road as Kobra pries open the package. He's never liked beef jerky, but this tastes like fucking _heaven_. He doesn't realize how hungry he was until he's actually eating.

"So, what happened to get you lost?" the girl, Mabel, asks him.

He doesn't really want to say. They might make a big deal of it.

But he’s shit at telling lies, and being put on the spot doesn’t help. So he goes with a version of the truth. "My crew got in a clap. Uh, a bad one, and they—well, I don't know what happened to them. I don't know what happened to me, really, either."

That much is really true.

"Ooh, are you a _Killjoy?_ I wanna be one when I grow up. I wanna drive a cool car and get a cool lasergun," the girl grins. She taps one of Kobra's scraped hands. "Is that what happened from your firefight?"

He blushes. It's embarrassing. He's always been clumsy. "No, uh, I… I kinda fell when I was walking. Just, like, I was walking one second and then the next thing I know, I'm eating the ground."

The two kids explode into giggles. Kobra watches them fondly. The little girl really reminds him of their girl.

_I hope she's safe._

For the millionth time.

"What's your name?" Flynn asks. He doesn't look Kobra in the eye and the Killjoy has to listen really closely to hear him.

"Kobra," he answers after a second. They’re going to recognize it. Seems like everybody knows who he is these days, and he’s not in the mood to give a lecture on the rebel life.

"That's it? I thought Killjoys had two-part names and shiny clothes. Where's your shiny clothes?" Mabel points to his stained t-shirt, her gaze swiping up and down to his scuffed boots and jeans that are nearly falling apart.

"I don't know. Um, my name's Kobra Kid, or Kobra, or sometimes people call me the Kobra Kid. Or just the Kid." Why'd he repeat it? He literally just said that.

They don't notice his fucking up, thank god. Flynn starts laughing again, though, still in his quiet little tone. "That's a funny name, 'cause you're not a kid," he says. "You're a grown-up!"

Kobra shrugs. "I'm still a kid to my big brother. His name's Party Poison."

Flynn appears deep in thought. "Are you the dead guys?"

_What?_

He's completely bewildered, and he sees the confusion on his face reflected by the window in the back of the cab. "You mean the Dead Eyes? The gang?"

That's one that's been roaming around the desert terrorizing individuals for years. They've been after Ghoul a few times, after he did some shit to a couple members when he was fourteen or fifteen. Stealing or something. He never explained it. But of course, since they know Ghoul and he’s a part of Kobra’s Zone family, the whole gang is after all of the Four.

Maybe the ones that beat him up earlier were part of the Eyes. That explains their seemingly-unprovoked hostility.

Mabel tugs on his arm to get his attention. He tunes back in.

 _Destroya,_ he needs to work on focusing.

"No," she says. "Not them, like… Daddy was listenin' to station HRBT 110 last week and the lady on there said somethin’ like 'Poison and Kobra are dead ‘cause of a fight in the city. Tune in later for more details.' Also two other guys but I forgot their names."

No.

No.

No no no no no no no no no no no oh please god _please god_ no.

"Were the other two guys' names Jet Star and Fun Ghoul?"

"Kinda like that."

Kobra's chest is feeling tight. He suddenly can't breathe. "Are you sure? I mean, I-I'm not dead. I was with them in the city; our-our girl got caught and we had to get her back."

"Mebbe they died an' you forgot 'bout it," Flynn offers.

He's feeling sick.

He's feeling sick.

They're not dead. The news is wrong.

NewsAGoGo is wrong.

NewsAGoGo is never wrong.

She never misreports an event.

Oh, god.

What if he came all this way and they're dead?

What if he walked for days, without rest, and they're dead?

What if every single one of them is dead?

Ghoul?

Jet?

Party?

The girl?

He starts to say "Are you sure?", as if maybe the report was misheard and maybe he's wrong about all of this and maybe Party Poison and Fun Ghoul and Jet Star and the girl are waiting for him at the safe point, but a spark of lightning followed by a mighty boom of thunder interrupts him.

Both kids shriek.

He doesn't even hear them.

She said they were listening to the radio last week.

It's been a week?

A week since—

Dave sticks his head out from the cab and turns around, one hand on the wheel.

 _Party drives like that,_ Kobra thinks, tugging on his ear. Then he berates himself in his head for doing it. That's a nervous thing he needs to stop immediately.

"It's gonna be a big storm," the man says. "We're gonna stop at Dead Pegasus gas a couple miles away. Sound okay, kid?"

It takes a minute for Kobra to register it's him who's being asked the question. "Yeah," he manages. There's a lump in his throat.

Dave gives him a funny look. Maybe he's just now realizing how weird it is that they're letting a bruised, bloody, and battered Killjoy carpool in the back with his children. But Kobra’s got too much other stuff on his mind now to care what they think of him.

They pull to a stop ten minutes later, in front of one of the Dead Pegasus gas stations that every Zone seems to have. The family gets out first, and he follows them to the smudged glass door, sidestepping a pile of rotting two-by-fours in the way. He glances at the old posters advertising Mad Gear concerts from months ago and at the gas prices from before the wars. A slightly-newer sign tacked on the glass reads “Welcome to sunny Zone 1.”

The woman pushes the door open and a little bell jingles, signaling their arrival to no one. The place is long abandoned, and good thing it is. They'd be out there with no protection if an enemy was inside.

Kobra silently thanks whoever's out there for the stroke of luck, and right before he ducks under the doorframe, a drop of acid sizzles onto his jacket.

* * *

 They’re probably dead now.

She’s probably dead now.

Ghoul just has to accept it.

That they're all gone and he's alone.

He wants to scream, cry, beat his chest and curse at the world. Anything to bring them back.

_Please, please, please, don't make me go through this._

"Um, y'kay, man?" the kid asks.

A bitter, storming "obviously not" almost comes spilling out in a rush of heat. But Fun Ghoul seals his lips at the last moment and just shakes his head. His greasy hair swings back and forth like an octupus's tentacles, and he realizes he hasn't showered in forever.

He probably smells like a sewer.

Jet makes them take showers once a week, twice if it's rained recently. His explanation goes somewhat like the following: "If I have to sit next to you all in a car for eight hours a day, then ya could at least try to not reek like a dumpster."

Ghoul always complains about it, because taking a shower—dumping a couple buckets of rainwater over his head or having someone spray him down with a hose—meant changing out of his clothes. And since he only had like two outfits, he would have to walk around wrapped in a towel until Kobra decided to do the laundry and rinse all the grime out of everything.

Now, of course, he would give anything for a shower and clean clothes.

"You lookin' miserable. Is it 'cause I called you a zombie? I didn't mean t' make you mad. But… if you are one… I kinda had to say it."

"No. It's fine."

"Then what's wrong? Or d'you normally sit in the sand with a toy robot and try to pretend you ain't cryin'?"

Dammit. He wipes away a tear that managed to make half a trail down his cheek. He looks up, and the kid with his little mohawk and concerned expression waits for an explanation.

"I just really miss my crew. I think—oh, god, I'm sorry." _Get yourself together, fucker._ "I think they're all ghosted, and—an' somehow I'm the only one who made it out."

"Are they zombies too, ya th—"

"No! Stop with the zombies! They're just probably dead, okay?! _Dead!_ In-a-Better-Living-body bag kind of dead!"

Both his hands fly up into the air. Like a surrender. Of his resistance to admit their—likely—fate.

The kid's mouth drops open and he looks genuinely surprised that Ghoul would even suggest such a thing. "Not the Fab Four, man, you can't say that!"

He can. He can say that, because he has practically solid proof right in his lap in the form of a little metal robot.

"Look. Look here. This, this was the girl's favorite goddamned toy." He thrusts it toward the kid in a moment of collapsing anger and he takes it, startled. "She never woulda left it. I know she had it with her when she was captured. And even 'f she didn't, the guy back over there said people've been looting our hideouts for our stuff. You think Kobra would just let people waltz in and grab shit if he was there? Would Party? Jet?"

His own words are too loud.

He can’t get rid of the horrible, end-of-the-world pang in the middle of his chest.

"They have to be dead," he says.

Dull, that's his voice as he admits what he doesn't want to believe.

Dull like the look in Party's eyes when he told Ghoul that the girl was gone.

Dull like the look in Jet's eye when they told him he'd lost half of his sight.

Dull like the look in Kobra's eyes when he readied his gun for their last firefight.

Those three didn't know it would be their last firefight.

Because they're dead now.

There's no way they're alive.

"They have to be dead now."

His own dull, dull voice all but confirms it to his own ears.

But no, it can’t be true. It can’t.

But if it is…

They're all gone?

He sacrificed himself for Jet and the girl and it did _nothing?_

He shut that door and he felt rays rip through his body and puncture his lungs and he died for _nothing?_

Nothing but to come back in the middle of the desert?

To be the only one who's still alive?

To be abandoned by his crew; by his crew that _would_ come back but _can't_ come back because they've been ghosted?

To be alone?

Why him? Out of all of them, why _him?_

Jet should be alive. Party should be alive. Kobra should be alive. The girl should be alive.

He wants to die right now. He just wants to close his eyes and be dead. Being dead with the other three guys would be infinitely better than being alive with nobody.

Thunder rumbles, and he tries to bring himself back to reality. He can’t die. He can’t do it. He’s not going to look up and be struck by lightning from the gods or something, because that's not going to happen, and he’s not going to try to move the process along faster by way of raygun, either.

Why the _fuck_ does this have to be his reality?

He didn't do anything.

He didn't do anything.

"I didn't fucking _do_ anything!" he yells.

His words are snake venom dripping through the veins of the desert air.

" _Fuck!_ " Ghoul screams, not at the boy, not at anyone. He just has to get it out. The screams that keep rising up in his chest can’t be pushed down anymore. He lets it all out, but it doesn’t help him. He doesn’t feel any better than before.

"Fuckin' motherfuckin' _fuck this!_ _Fuck this!_ "

The kid's sat down a foot away and is just looking at him quietly. He doesn't say a thing. The robot is in his lap.

Fun Ghoul wants to punch something, but there's nothing to punch. Nothing to fucking punch. Not even a cactus. The pain would be welcome, it would be jarring, it would bring him some kind of control over all the shit that's happening.

Why is this world being so fucking _cruel?_

" _Fuck this!_ " He slices a hand through the air and into the ground, sending up a flurry of dust particles. They swirl around in the air like they’re in a blender and he’s the blades. "I just want to go fucking _home!_ "

He just wants to go home.

That's all he wants.

Home, as in where he's safe and where he doesn't have to worry about anybody because they're all there with him, wherever there actually is.

Home, the trans-am with the other three and the girl. That's where he wants to be.

He feels tears pool up in his eyes, stupid fucking tears that aren't going to help him now, oh, god, shut the hell up and stop crying...

"Don't be sad, man, maybe the news is wrong…" The boy, who hasn't been this still in all the time he's been with Ghoul—a grand total of three and a half hours—barely raises his voice above a whisper. "Once they said my brother got shot in a clap, but he came home the next night 'cause the broadcast was a hoax to get people off his tail. And it worked."

“But what if…” And then he realizes he doesn’t have an excuse for why that couldn’t be true.

Dr. Death-Defying even did that for Jet and Kobra once. He remembers that clearly because of how angry Party was about it when they returned.

Could that be what it is? Could it just be a lie Dr. D told to keep the other three off the radar while they search for Ghoul?

Could it?

It gives him a little hope. There's that dumb poem… it's like 'hope is a feather' or something... that Jet likes to quote, but he's never understood it. But Fun Ghoul actually gets the meaning of that now.

He's a little cheered up. That black hole feeling in his stomach is gone. Mostly.

'Cause the more he thinks about it, the more it makes sense. Yeah. Party and the others are coming to find him, but they had to get creative about how they were going to do it without getting tracked by Better Living.

"Yeah," he says, almost inaudibly. The rush of blood pounding through his head nearly drowns out the word.

Yeah.

But then why was there that thing… with that elevator and the mirror? His first memory after the blackness after going down in Headquarters.

Maybe it was just a dream or something.

Yeah, he’ll write it off as a dream. No need to destroy this newfound hope, when his more depressing theories don’t even make full sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He slowly emerges from the abyss that is his troubled mind right now, becoming aware of the fact that sweat is running down his face.

He’s crouched in the dust with his elbows on his knees and his head tucked down. It’s uncomfortable.

He breathes. Breathe in, breathe out.

And decides he’s done moping in public view. He stands up without another word.

He’s still clutching the robot in his hand, his fingers wrapped around its neck—if it can be called that; do robots have necks?—his fingers wrapped around the part where the shiny metal head connects to the body like he’s strangling it.

More thunder.

He looks up. Clouds are blocking out the sky, woolly blankets smothering its existence.

“We gotta go inside,” he says suddenly. “Come on.”

"But—" the kid begins to protest, then he stops. “Are you—”

"Don’t worry about me. Just come on."

They thread back through the maze of merchandise stalls until they reach a big building in the center of the market. It might've once been a gym or a rec center, but it’s fallen into such disrepair since the wars that it’s unrecognizable as anything but a ruin. Regardless, it offers protection, and the people left lingering at the flea market are taking down their booths and wares and heading inside to wait out the coming storm.

Ghoul and the kid follow them in. They all have the same idea, apparently, and it’s going to be crowded. Staying outside when the rain hits is not an option, and there’s no other place to go within walking distance.

With a storm like this, there’s a favorable chance that there’s going to be acid. Ghoul’s been caught out in a few of those before, and once the droplets burned a hole right through his t-shirt and onto his skin. Kobra, who actually paid attention in Bat City school—does anyone do that or are they too pumped full of emotion-suppressing drugs to care?—once mentioned that acid rain never used to be this bad. It used to be milder than it is now: still damaging to the environment, but never this bad. Never able to kill you, never able to burn your skin to the bone.

That was before.

This is now, after Helium Wars fucked up the atmosphere so badly it won't ever go back to normal. And considering the mass of rainclouds inking the sky, well, this storm could very well take a full day.

It’s crowded in the place, the air thick with a strong scent of mold and mildew. As people flood inside, Ghoul leads the kid down a hall and throw a set of doors. This room must have been a gym or something, because there’s a deflated basketball right at his feet that he almost kicks away. The girl would have a field day with this—she loves playing sports with him and Jet. She usually beats them, too… well, when they don't try too hard.

“Y’ever been inna acid storm?” the boy asks. Apparently, his mind's been on the same stuff Ghoul's has. He sits on a set of bleachers as people nudge their way past and into the center of the room.

“Couple ‘a times.” Ghoul licks his lips and watches everyone settle with their backs against the wall to wait out the storm. “Nothin’ fun.”

There’s a startling bang as someone shuts the main door. There’s at least one hundred fifty people here, probably a bunch more. He’s never been good at estimating. He never knows if his numbers are off.

But as the rain begins to beat on the tin rooftop as fiercely as drummers at the Zones' summer festivals, Fun Ghoul does know one thing:

They’re going to be stuck in here a while.

* * *

 Party nearly chokes as the door slams behind the draculoid escort.

It's Jet Star.

Jet Star is the other prisoner they just threw on the floor next to him.

Jet Star is right there.

 _Jet Star is right there_.

This is un-fucking- _real_.

"Jet?" he calls.

His voice goes up an octave as the words come out. He can't believe it. He can't believe it. All that worrying and Jet—

"Jet, oh, god!" His words get caught in his throat. It's gotta be him. It's gotta be. He knows it instinctively.

But Jet says nothing in response. Doesn't even move.

Party drops down and slides across the rough concrete, sticking his hand through the metal bars separating his cell and Jet's. He can almost reach him. "Jet, get up, get up, man. They're gone now. Come on."

The curly-haired Killjoy coughs weakly as Party's fingertips brush his knee. Jet lifts his head an inch above the ground, and as his hair falls from his face, Party's soaring hope is confirmed.

 _It's him_ , Party thinks, and relief rushes through his body so quickly that he gets dizzy. "Jesus, Jet, I thought you were dead!"

"Party..." Jet’s voice, flooded with relief, is raspier than usual. Hoarser, like he’s been shouting and hasn’t rested his vocal chords in years. He curls a hand around one of the bars and starts to pull himself up. “Party.”

The redhead waits for more words, but nothing comes. Because something's wrong with Jet.

He's struggling to sit up, can't get his other arm underneath him to press up off the floor. It's like his limbs are weighed down with bricks.

"Are you okay?" It's the single dumbest question he's ever asked. Jet is not obviously not okay.

He watches concernedly as no answer comes, wants to break through the bars and help him. But he can't do anything.

Jet focuses all his energy on sitting up until finally regains enough strength to get his back against the wall. He can barely hold himself up.

"I thought you were all dead." He leans back and closes his eyes. "I'm… thank the Witch. Thank the Witch.”

While he's sitting there, chest heaving with exertion, Party takes in the sight of him. He was starting to think…

No.

None of that matters anymore, because Jet’s here right now and he’s very much alive. He's breathing, breaths that are a little too shallow but that are still breaths, which means he is alive and in one piece.

He’s wearing his usual black t-shirt and brown jeans, but his leather jacket, Party’s favorite with the scythe card on the side, is nowhere in sight. Goosebumps leave little ripples up and down his arms, and he shivers. Party starts to take off his Dead Pegasus jacket to give it to him, but then remembers he doesn't have that either.

Jet doesn't have his gun or shoulder holster either, both which he always has with him, or his eyepatch. His now exposed blind eye is a pale, godless gray, almost a chalky blue compared to the deep brown pool of the other. Every time Party sees it, he remembers every detail of the injury, of Jet’s silent struggle trying to relearn everything with only half his sight. It was hell for Jet and it was hell for the rest of them as they could only sit back and watch.

Party reaches back through the bars, mirrors the way Jet's sitting on his own side of the cell, and grabs his hand. He entwines their fingers together and squeezes as he looks at his companion’s weathered face.

Something is wrong with him. He’s pale, nearly as white as the uniforms of the draculoids that brought him here. He's not breathing normally, like it pains him to take in air.

Something is wrong with him.

He looks like he's gone through hell and back since Party saw him last.

Something is wrong with him.

"What happened to you?" Party says.

Anger bubbles up in his throat as Jet gives him a beaten, torn-down kind of look that can't be put into words.

_Something is wrong with him._

"Party," he whispers. His voice cracks, raw and torn. "They-they… it hurt so bad, Party.”

The two cells have become so quiet he swears he can hear his pulse about to beat out of his skin. His heart shouldn’t be going this fast. He's scared. He’s scared for Jet. He's scared for what Jet’s about to say.

"You don't know—so many times. So bad."

Jet Star looks small, like saying those words shrunk him down to nothing. Nothing but a shell.

"What happened, Jet? You gotta tell me."

"They—I had to go in and… when I didn't tell them what they wanted, they gave—they used el-electric shocks."

He sounds so shaky. Party looks down and Jet's hand is trembling so much that it's moving his, too. He squeezes it tighter to keep it still. This, this melting down, it's completely out of character for him. The Jet that Party Poison knows is always optimistic, never gives up. Never broken.

They must’ve—oh, _god,_ he doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want to know.

They must’ve broken him.

And he confirms it with his next words.

"I tried for hours, Party. I tried to hold on, b-but they made me tell them everything; I… I told them—they wouldn't stop. I told them ev-everything." And now he’s crying, trying to hide his little pitiful gasps for air that fracture Party’s heart over and over until all he’s left with is shattered glass inside his chest. “Where the s-safe houses are and the—and the schedule for the markets in Zone One an-and Show Pony’s inner-city mail route and why we take c-care of—”

He can’t listen anymore. It’s too much. “You’re okay. Shh. Don’t worry about it.” He draws circles over the joint connecting Jet’s thumb to his hand and tries to calm him down. Jet’s gripping his hand so tightly that Party’s knuckles have gone white. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not, Party, they’re all gon-gonna die ‘cause of me—everybody, 'cause 'a Better Living's gonna kill them all an-an-and it’s gonna be my fault, and I even told them about the girl!”

“Jet, stop. Breathe. Just breathe for me, okay? You’re gonna be okay,” Party murmurs through the bars. “I promise. Somehow, we’re gonna get out of here. We’ll find Ghoul and Kobra, and the girl, and we’ll all be together again. No one’s going to die.”

He's not even listening. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry; I-I really—I really tried not to tell them," he hiccups, sucking in nothing but city-approved recycled dry air that doesn’t want to stay in his lungs. He's to the point of hyperventilating.

Party squeezes his hand tighter. "Shh. Shh. You gotta breathe for me. C'mon." He starts singing something quietly, the first song that comes to mind. It's an old one that Dr. Death-Defying only plays on the radio during special occasions like holidays, and he hopes it'll trigger Jet into remembering something happy. Or anything, really; anything that’s not this and that’s not the utter doom of the past month’s events.

He doesn't have the best voice, and he keeps forgetting how some parts go, so he makes them up on the fly. It doesn't really sound right, without the twangy guitars that make it a real song, but Jet had to get quieter to listen and he's no longer on the verge of choking from not breathing.

Finally, the traumatized Killjoy gets a complete sentence out with less of a struggle. "I didn't wanna tell 'em all the stuff, but I had t'. They just kept… they woul’n’t stop.” He's slurring his words, exhausted from the pain and tears and probably ready to give up.

“I'm so sorry, Star,” Party says back, and he wishes that he could bear his pain instead. The torture that's rumored of the company, the anguish he can only imagine Jet went through seems unreal, as imaginary as surviving in the desert. It doesn't feel real until you're out there experiencing it. Or watching someone experience it.

"Watch my back for me," Jet says, eyelids drooping. His hysteria was the last brick standing between sleep and consciousness. "Don' let 'em take me back, 'lease, Party..."

"I won't, Star. I swear on my life. I’m gonna make sure you’re okay."

Jet’s grip around Party’s hand slackens and his eyes close before the rest of Party’s words come out.

“I’m so _fucking_ sorry they did this to you.”

~~~ 

He sits there for ages, one shoulder against the metal bars with Jet's limp hand in his, fuming silently. The side of his arm is starting to ache from keeping it in such a weird position, but he doesn't let go of Jet's hand. It’s like an anchor and he fears that if he lets go, he’ll be lost out to sea.

The other Killjoy-turned-prisoner is out, head lolling sideways onto his shoulder. A defiant coil of hair pokes its way into Party's side of the barrier, and he smooths it down tenderly.

He wants to get out of here. He wants to get Jet out of here.

No one should be here, no matter the crime. Not like living is a crime, but even if Better Living's corrupted hive mind sees it as one, this shouldn’t be the punishment.

Everyone working for SCARECROW deserves to die a miserable death.

Even if they don't know the nitty gritty of the stuff going on. They should feel that something's a little off-kilter. Even with the pills. They shouldn't be satisfied. They should know that something's wrong. They don't have an excuse.

Better Living usually loses no time in turning their prisoners into happy little robots with no memory of their past lives. They’ll employ them in the sweatshops they think no one knows about, they’ll make them janitors to clean the apartment complexes, or worse. They'll turn them into dracs.

He’s heard the reports, everyone has. He’s read the notes Show Pony gathers from city recon every month. Horrifying things that only top-level executives in the city have knowledge of.

He thought they'd be put through more of it by now. They haven't even done the whole "mind-cleansing" brainwashing shit yet, which makes him grateful. But also uneasy. For multiple reasons.

They tortured Jet, but they didn’t brainwash him.

Party doesn’t know the grim details of what went down, but he knows that it was something terrible.

Jet is the only one in their crew who never gives up. He’s smiled through three broken ribs at the same time, through a nasty bout of Zone flu that nearly killed him, through the loss of his goddamn eye. So seeing him broken, so utterly hopeless… it twists Party's guts in a way he didn't think was possible. Makes him sick. Physically sick in such a way he could throw up.

And he doesn't know anything about Kobra or Ghoul or the girl. If they're even alive. If they've been turned… if they've been killed…

How did the firefight even end?

He died first, he knows that. He was shot through the neck and into the brain, and then he saw everything and then he saw nothing.

He knows it was death. The shriveled fingers of the figure Death, curling toward his soul… it left an intangible stain on his mind that he doesn’t want to dwell on. It's there, tugging for him with its malevolent caress.

But now he isn’t dead. Better Living, masters of cheating The End As We Know It, brought him back. More or less intact.

They have the technology, the needed equipment. They do it all the time with fallen 'joys; bring their bodies in and if they're deemed acceptable, resuscitate them with their freaky meds and slap a drac mask on 'em, which effectively traps their souls and they can't think for themselves anymore.

 _Sounds fun,_ he thinks dryly.

He's alive and not a drac, and neither is Jet.

Kobra and Ghoul…

Well, he doesn't know about them.

He's praying they're alive. He's praying they're safe. He's praying they're somewhere in the Zones with the girl, coming to break the two of them out. But that they're better prepared than the one rogue's rescue party that showed up earlier.

That didn't end well.

Two things the unknown Killjoy said before releasing him pops back into his head. " _Before the place detonates_ ," and " _I'm a friend of Show Pony's."_

Nothing that he knew of detonated anywhere near here—wouldn’t he would have heard it? Unless it happened during the brief period of time he was knocked out—so the bomb or whatever it was must have been deactivated.

And if they were a friend of Show Pony's, then maybe Show Pony and Dr. D are orchestrating a better way to break them out. Hopefully they weren't included in the casualties from the clap vs. Better Living.

Worst case scenario is that Fun Ghoul and the Kobra Kid got captured or ghosted and turned into dracs. And maybe, when Party Poison inevitably falls asleep, an exterminator or draculoid or some kind of Better Living official is going to come in and stuff a mask over his and Jet's faces.

But maybe since they’re the Fabulous Four, or half of them, at least, they’re special exceptions.

(Which is probably not good.)

Or maybe they’re just going to leave the two of them here, alone, hungry, and desperate.

Maybe they're going to let them starve to death.

That sends his mind down another trail.

He’s not that hungry now, which, at least, is a little reassuring. They haven’t fed him once, haven’t even given him a sip of water, but he’s not about to die if he doesn’t get it. Which means his captivity can’t have been more than a few days long.

Most people would be pretty hungry at this point, but ever since he’s come out to the desert, he’s learned how much he can endure. Once he and Kobra went for a week without eating a single morsel of actual food, because they didn't have even one carbon.

They ate weeds poking up from the ground.

Yes, Party Poison has pushed himself to the breaking point and come back from it. But not unscathed. And that doesn’t mean he wants it to happen again. And not to Jet either.

Oh, Jet—

He's gonna worry himself to death about him.

He's gonna…

He's gonna…

He's gonna fall asleep.

_Stop; you have to find a way out of here._

A fuzzy cloud that barely penetrates his subconscious.

_You have to..._

His mind always wanders before he falls asleep.

_Make sure Jet..._

Party Poison is the only thing carrying them now.

_Make sure Jet is safe..._

Party will ensure it, no matter what. If it costs him his life.

_Find a way..._

He's barely conscious, his hand in Jet's.

_… to get out of here._

Looks like his mysterious adrenaline blast has finally worn off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thoughts on the current events of this fic?? anything surprising?? any tears?? any murderous thoughts towards the writer??


End file.
